Houthis warn ships to stay away from Saudi ports — or risk attack anywhere

The Houthis have now put the industry on notice: Shipping companies were told not to load or discharge cargo at any Saudi ports, according to an email sent by the Houthis’ Sanaa-based Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center (HOCC) seen by Reuters. Vessels violating the order could face Houthi “sanctions” and may be targeted “in any location” within the group’s operational reach, the email warned. That is the executive translation of Monday’s declaration, Aseel Al Aranki, research and analysis department manager at River Prime, tells EnterpriseAM.

Any ship, any flag, is fair game: The warning appears to cover any vessel loading or discharging at a Saudi port, regardless of its flag, ownership, or operator. Maritime security firm Ambrey now assesses ships calling at Saudi ports as high risk and has advised them to reconsider Red Sea transits or adopt additional mitigation measures.

“They just have to shoot at ships passing their coastline,” Khalij Economics Director Justin Alexander tells EnterpriseAM. Around 10 crude tankers a day pass through Bab Al Mandab. The group holds the Yemeni coast along it, and owners and ins’ers price that threat and reroute on their own.

What counts as a Saudi vessel remains unclear: The Houthis have clarified that Saudi port calls could make a vessel a target, but have not explained how ships would be identified and selected. In practice, the Houthis could consider a combination of ownership, operator, charterer, cargo, origin or destination, and previous port calls rather than relying solely on the vessel’s flag, Antonella Teodoro, senior transport consultant at MDS Transmodal, tells EnterpriseAM, noting that “the lack of transparent criteria adds uncertainty for the industry.”

Changing flags may not offer much protection: Shipowners can alter flags, ownership structures, charter arrangements, and AIS destination fields, but these can be checked against commercial shipping databases, historical voyage patterns, and satellite imagery, Teodoro adds. Such changes may complicate attribution but are unlikely to hide a Saudi connection if other indicators remain.

How much of that intelligence the Houthis can access is not publicly known: “There has been considerable speculation about external intelligence support, particularly from Iran, but the extent and nature of any such assistance remain difficult to verify,” Teodoro notes, noting that “it is therefore not possible to accurately assess how much of the Houthis’ maritime picture is independently generated versus externally supported.”

The market isn't waiting to find out: Red Sea war-risk premiums more than doubled after Yemen’s Houthis declared a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia. Indicative premiums rose to around 0.75% of a vessel’s value from 0.3%, potentially adding hundreds of thousands of USD to a seven-day voyage, Reuters reports.

What happens to the barrels?

Some tankers are already turning back: A VLCC carrying 2 mn barrels of Saudi crude to China reversed course after loading at Yanbu and is now heading north toward Suez rather than south past Yemen. Another vessel carrying 700k barrels for India also turned back toward Suez.

There are two ways around this, and neither is cheap. Ships taking the Suez route face a longer haul — the largest tankers have to offload part of their cargo through Egypt's Sumed pipeline to the Mediterranean before they can fit through the canal. Others are being rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope entirely, bypassing the Red Sea altogether — Asian refineries could face delays of around a month sailing that path, Kpler's Matt Smith said. “The impact is going to be massive in the first month,” he added. The biggest immediate risk is to Saudi flows heading east — more than 3 mn bbl/d of Saudi crude could be forced onto one of these longer routes, Energy Aspects' Richard Bronze told Reuters.

Yanbu itself hasn't stopped, though: The port is continuing to load tankers already inside the Red Sea or arriving through Suez. A supertanker heading to Yanbu to load crude — under the flag of Liberia — safely crossed the waterway in the past few hours, becoming the first vessel to transit since the Houthis' announcement. Six refineries across Japan, South Korea, China, and Taiwan said their scheduled loadings of Saudi crude from the Red Sea remain on track for now, with three continuing to send tankers to Yanbu, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter.

This isn't just an oil story: With Hormuz down, the Red Sea now carries the bulk of the Kingdom’s imports as much as its exports, Alexander says, so a sustained disruption reaches inputs, consumer goods, and food — not only oil receipts.

Riyadh is stuck between two options: Silence in the face of a declared blockade risks reading as weakness, and the Saudi-led coalition has already warned it will answer with “force” and begun putting protective measures around its ships in the strait. But a hard military response risks widening a US-Iran war into a multi-front regional one that pulls in Yemen, Al Aranki notes.